


Side Effect

by rainsnowandflowers



Category: Death Note, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tokyo Ghoul, Canon-Typical Violence, Follows plot of Death Note, Gen, Ghoul!Light, Ghouls, I can't write romance, No pairings right now, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, and also a student, because i am horrible, but Light is a ghoul, do you want me to try, ghouls being ghoulish, i can try, same universe as Tokyo Ghoul, updates like once a year, what should I tag?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6194731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainsnowandflowers/pseuds/rainsnowandflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ryuk didn’t like writing using the characters of the humans. So Ryuk hadn’t written everything that he could have in the Death Note just because he didn’t like the characters. Simple. Besides, it wasn’t missing much anyways. All the important stuff was there and everything else was pretty unnecessary, right? "</p><p>An AU in which using the Death Note transforms the user into a ghoul, and Light has to deal with hiding both his identity as Kira and now as a ghoul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ghoul

Ryuk didn’t like writing using the characters of the humans. The language he’d chosen to write the rules of the Death Note, the fairly common language known among humans as English, was relatively easy to use, but Ryuk didn’t like the characters. They weren’t as interesting as the calligraphy of Eastern languages, and many other scripts used the same characters in different ways.

So Ryuk hadn’t written _everything_ that he could have in the Death Note, because he didn’t like the characters. Simple. Besides, it wasn’t missing much anyways. All the important stuff was covered, and everything else was pretty much unnecessary, right?

Eventually, when Yagami Light, the owner of the Death Note that Ryuk hadn’t listed all of the rules in, the Death Note that he’d dropped in the world of humans, asked if there was anything other than the deal for the eyes of a Death God that Ryuk had failed to mention before, he’d really just complained and asked for apples.

An annoyed Light eventually obliged, and a few apples later, Ryuk, for some reason, decided that he’d tell Light the possibly best rule of the rules he didn’t feel like writing.

“So, Light, how many people have you picked off using that Note by now?” said Ryuk casually as he swallowed his last apple, reclining on Light’s bed.

“Don’t avoid my original question, reaper. I gave you what you wanted.” Light spat at the Shinigami.

“You started asking questions first. So now I have a question, and when I get my answer, I’ll give you yours.” Ryuk gave Light one of his best, most sinister smiles.

Light paused for a second to think before responding. “Approximately 750 criminals.” He replied, emphasising the last word.

“Well, then this rule is most definitely already affecting you,” Ryuk smirked and pointed a bony finger at him, while Light glared silently. “It’s not really a rule anyway, more of a side effect. That’s why I didn’t write it in the “Rules” section.”

“Continue.” Light’s eyes were locked onto the unnatural form of the Shinigami.

“Every time that you use that Death Note, the number of red children in your body goes up. More red children makes your body have to change, to deal with all the children.” Ryuk smiled back at Light, not offering any more explanation.

“Red children?” asked Light, raising his voice slightly. “What sort of joke is this?”

“It isn't a joke,” replied Ryuk, taking his eyes off Light and instead turning to lie on his back and stare at the ceiling. “The number of red children in you must be around … hm, two thousand? A normal human has about three hundred. If you were wondering.”

“Explain what red children are.” Growled Light, searching his mind for anything that the Shinigami could have named a red child. Judging by speech clues, could it be a Shinigami term for some particular type of humans? That wouldn’t make sense, given the specific context Ryuk had used it in. Something inside the human body, perhaps red blood cells?

Cells…

Red children cells … A thought struck Light, and he darted across his room to retrieve a dusty science textbook that he’d needed a few years ago for classes. He opened it to the index, finding a page number before he flipped to a bright and colourful page with a large title proclaiming this page was dedicated to the “Cells of the Human Body”. Light scanned through the page’s contents before arriving at a small paragraph in the corner.

Red children.

Red child cells, more commonly known as RC cells.

While mostly a useless by-product of the human body, the cells had one definite purpose in the medical world. RC cells, or specifically, the “factor” of them found within the body, could be used to prove whether a suspect was human, or instead, a cannibalistic human-like monster known as a ghoul.

This was due to the fact that a human body’s RC factor was only in the range of two hundred to five hundred, whereas a ghoul’s was extremely high, typically anywhere from one thousand to eight thousand.

And Ryuk had just told Light that his body had somewhere around two thousand. And that his body needed to “change.”

Light stopped still for a second, before rapidly closing the book shut and placing it back on the bookshelf. It might have just been paranoia, but he could only think of one possibly meaning to the reaper’s words.

“So… you are telling me that the Death Note will make me a ghoul?” Light didn’t make eye contact with Ryuk, staring at the collection of old and dusty school textbook in his bookshelf.

“Well now, you might actually be as smart as you think you are!” cried Ryuk, giving a small chuckle. “That Note is already changing your body to match a ghoul’s. I never heard of a human becoming fully a ghoul with the Death Note, though. Normally, they’re dead before their body has as many red children as you do.”

Light stared intently at the space between Advanced Mathematics 1 and Advanced Mathematics 2, thinking.

Ryuk had informed him that he was becoming a ghoul, and the process would continue for as long as he judged the unworthy with the Death Note. Ryuk had also told him that it too late for him to back out now, as his RC factor was already much higher than a normal humans, and he’d he was “changing” to adapt to it.

But there was no way that Light could give up being Kira, throw away his dream of a perfect humanity free of crime, throw away the only weapon that could make it possible, the Death Note. The Death Note that was slowly making him into a creature whose very existence itself was a crime.

Ghouls were the predator of mankind, standing above the humans who claimed they were at the top of the food chain. Beasts whom looked similar to man at first, before they unveiled their inhuman glowing eyes and unleashed weapons made of their own flesh, ready and waiting to tear into the only meals they could stomach, the flesh of a human being.

And Light was going to become one of these wicked beasts, hiding in the dark shadows of man, waiting for an opportunity to pick off someone and eat them.

Light swallowed somewhat nervously. Yagami Light was Kira, and he would never be able to stop being Kira. The world needed Kira, and he, as Kira, had the divine task of judging the weak, no matter what he became.

Had he stopped being Kira when L pledged to put an end to him? Of course not. So there was no way he could stop now, even if the side effect was leaving humanity behind.

A side effect that really had already started to appear, Light realised.

Ghouls lived on exclusively on human flesh, as their unique stomachs made it impossible for them to survive on anything else. While Light had definitely not been craving flesh in recent memory, he had been constantly hungry, even if just a bit. A pit had been growing in his stomach, and no amount of food had been able to prevent it from becoming even larger.

If he was becoming a ghoul, then he should have noticed that his food was lacking taste, wouldn’t he? Ghouls tongues were wired quite differently to humans, making normal food taste abhorrent. Light _had_ noticed this, he realised, he just hadn’t thought anything of it. He’d eaten so much extra food since he began feeling constantly hungry, but none of it had tasted quite right. Light had figured it was just that his sister’s cooking sucked, or that he must’ve accidentally grabbed a bag of chips that were past their use-by date. But it wasn’t ever just that, was it?

Yagami Light was becoming a ghoul. And he had no option but to leave his humanity behind if he wanted humanity as a species to succeed.

It was poetic, he thought to himself.

Being a ghoul couldn’t possibly be too difficult, could it? While he was still able to eat human food at this stage, he had no idea how many more names in the Death Note equalled him gaining a ghoul’s stomach organs. And even if –not if, when– he did have to turn to eating humans, he could easily sustain himself on those he judged using the Note. If a criminal was judged by Kira, then that criminal deserved to be eaten by the almighty Kira, didn’t they?

Light shuddered at the thought, of taking a human and slowly eating them, perhaps keeping frozen limbs inside the freezer, waiting to be eaten whole.

“Yo, Light, are you still with me?” Ryuk’s words cut into his thoughts, the Shinigami snapping his fingers at Light.

“Yes,” replied Light, shaking his head to clear it of his thoughts, making sure his face was the emotionless mask he preferred. “I have accepted it. That I will become a ghoul. If being Kira means I must also be a ghoul, then I will accept it.”

“Really? That was quick,” replied the Shinigami nonchalantly.

“Do you know when I will become a completed ghoul?” asked Light.

Ryuk shrugged. “Do I look like ghoul-human transformation expert to you?”

Light scowled, before looking down at the Death Note sitting open on his desk. He tapped his pen on the desk a few times absently, before taking a deep breath, and began to write names into the small black notebook.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Within a week, Light found that he could no longer stomach human food, the very smell of his mother’s home cooked dinners making him feel sick.

His mother fretted over her son’s sudden lack of appetite, which led to him taking food to his bedroom while he “studied” to “eat,” and then have to stealthily find a way to get it into the garbage.

As much as he hated the way food now tasted to him, Light forced himself to learn how to pretend to eat the human food, or at the very least keep it down until dinner had finished and he was able to throw it back up afterwards. Everything he tried was absolutely terrible, wholly unpalatable to the extreme that the taste of anything, sweets, savoury foods, everything he'd tried in his house, repulsed his entire body. 

Learning to pretend to eat was a gruelling process, and Light forced himself to work hard to master the deception as quickly as possible, as his mother became more and more annoyed that he would not eat dinner with the rest of the family. Although he hadn’t yet vomited up at the table, the disgusted looks that would flash across his face whenever he took a bite had definitely been noticed, he was sure.

After a fortnight, the hole in Light’s stomach that had quickly established itself as being unending worsened. His senses had improved rapidly enough for him to be able to clearly smell the humans around all him, which only added to his new hunger, a hunger to just grab one of them and rip into their chest, blood spilling out as he raised the soft organs to his mouth and took a bite…

Light also quickly discovered that his eyes would turn the ghoulish black and red automatically if he thought too much about his hunger.

The pain in Light’s stomach was eventually so unbearable that he realised that there was no way that he could go on without food. After some deliberation, Light organised an event using his Death Note.

Really, it was another test to see for how long he had control over a person before death, similar to the tests he’d already performed on criminals. As long as his orders were physically possible for the victim to perform, it should work perfectly.

At 12:30 that night, a man whom had left prison 5 years early after committing a series of high-scale robberies and bank frauds, would walk to the park nearby his home, find the most secluded area, and then die of a heart attack at 12:35.  

He was the carefully-chosen target of Light’s plan. He’d spent a ridiculous amount of time finding a criminal that was within walking distance of his house and wasn’t involved in drug abuse or rape, or anything that Light believed would make him taste foul. And the man would simply die of a heart attack, so that Light wouldn’t have to kill him in person.

At 12:25, Light snuck out of his house and cautiously snuck to the park that his victim would be arriving at.

He’d been careful to make sure that the stalker monitoring the household, the one whom Ryuk had pointed out to him, had already left and gone home, which he would do if he saw Light’s bedroom light turn off at night. Light had watched him leave through the bathroom window, checking to make sure he’d left.  

Light didn’t have long to wait when he arrived at the entrance to the park, which was only dimly lit by a few dull streetlamp. Eventually the man he’d chosen appeared at the front gate, and, as stealthily as he could, Light followed him. The man stumbled through the darkness and stopped at the deepest part of the gardens, surrounded by tall trees and shrubs, looking around for something.

Light could smell the man so close by, his hunger growing stronger and stronger with every step he took towards him. Unbeknownst to him, his eyes had become a black colour, spiderwebbed with bright red veins matching his crimson pupils.

Light was going to eat this man. Not a shred of doubt lingered in his subconscious. He was _his_.  

His hunger, however, had made him slightly more careless than he would have been normally. As he monitored the man within the hidden grove of the park, waiting for him to clutch his chest and die, Light didn’t notice his steps getting heavier, more noticeable.

Despite his dazed and confused state, the man noticed, turning suddenly in Light’s direction and spotting the teenage boy among the shadows.

“Wh-who are you? What do you want?” asked the man nervously as Light moved towards him slowly, eventually stepping into the faint light cast by a nearby park lamp.

“I am the one who ended you.” Light said with a gruesomely cheerful tone, a sinister smile on his lips as he crept closer, noticing that the man’s eyes were looking directly into his.

“Gh-gh-gho-” the man began to stutter, but his cry was cut off as he suddenly reached to grab his chest as it burned with the pain of a heart attack. He collapsed, the faint echoes of a scream that only barely left his throat fading. By 12:35 exactly, as seen on Light’s watch, the man was dead.

Slowly, Light edged towards the corpse, mouth watering. Ghoulish hunger was easily over-riding his thoughts, any protests or hesitation that Light may have normally had before were completely absent. Breathily, he muttered to himself, “thanks for the food.”

Light leapt upon the corpse, biting deep into the dead man’s exposed neck and throat and ripping apart tendons with his teeth. It was easily the best thing he’d ever had, Light decided immediately, relishing the coppery taste of blood. He pulled apart the man’s clothing and plunged his hands into his stomach, tearing open his chest and exposing still-warm organs, which Light scooped out with glee. Blood dripped down his chin and onto his own clothes, but Light couldn’t care less as he filled his stomach with the dead man’s own stomach and various other innards.  

It took Light around 15 minutes to finish and then dispose of the body, which had been recognisable until Light had torn apart his face to make the corpse more anonymous. He then quickly made his way to the toiletries block of the park to wash the blood off himself, only to notice that he, and especially his jumper was covered in the stuff. Vaguely annoyed, he took it off and attempted to rinse it out as best as he could. Briefly he wondered if he could wash it out at home without his mother noticing.

“So, are you full now?” asked a voice, and Light spun around to see a familiar Shinigami floating behind him. Light cursed under his breath, having forgotten completely that Ryuk would have, and ultimately did, follow him.

“You know, since you’re pretty much one hundred percent ghoul by this stage, you’ve gotta be the first human to ever become a ghoul using the Death Note? Or at least, the first one I ever heard of.” Ryuk watched as Light turned back to his attempt to wash the blood out of his jumper, which was not progressing as well as Light would have preferred.  

“Also, you eat real noisily. I’m surprised the entire neighbourhood didn’t hear you.”

Light froze. “Were there witnesses?” he said, swallowing nervously.

“Nah, you’re safe for now.” Replied Ryuk, but Light remained concerned. After leaving the toiletries block, he circled around the park for anyone else, but failed to pick up any human scents with his strong ghoulish nose.

Briefly, he imagined what he would have looked like to human passerby, a young, teenaged boy ripping apart and devouring the body of another man …

For the first time the entire night, Light felt a bit sick towards his actions. Had his hunger over-ridden a part of him that remained disgusted at his actions? Light looked down at the red stained jumper he was carrying. The scent of blood clung to it strongly, the blood of the man whom he had cannibalised.

Bile rose up in Light’s throat, making him grimace. It tasted of that blood, and he coughed slightly, thinking of the way he’d torn into the man and feasted. He had experienced no regret when he was digging into the man’s organs, but now, when he thought about what his hungry mind had inclined him to do, it made him question whether he had been right to follow this path.

Clenching his hand together, he remembered how it had felt for him to rip open the man’s flesh mercilessly, his grotesque grin that had adorned his face, not unlike that of a child’s smile on his birthday …

Light shook his head.

The man was a criminal, who had been judged by Kira, who wasn’t needed in the perfect future world Kira aspired for. And he needed to eat, and eat like this, so really hadn’t he done the righteous thing and eaten the flesh of a criminal, rather than someone he picked off the street?  

 Ghouls could only ingest one thing, so why should he feel disgusted that he’d enjoyed it? Light wasn’t human anymore, why should he even considering this? He’d stopped being human the moment he’d picked up the Death Note. Or was it when he’d first used it?

Regardless, Light had just done what he needed to do. As a predator, he’d just hunted his prey. Animals picked off members of weaker species daily and nobody cared, because that was the way nature worked, the way the food chain worked. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

No, was the firm answer in his mind. He was absolutely fine.

“Yohoo? Light? Are you still with me?” Ryuk called, snapping him out of his thoughts again. He turned and glared at the Shinigami in response, before taking off towards the exit of the shadowy park.

“Where are you going?” asked Ryuk, following along right behind him.

“To bed,” replied Light, not looking back. “I need to sleep if I want to keep my grades up.”

Ryuk chuckled a bit. “Of all the things going on here, that’s what you’re worried about?”

Light didn’t respond.                                                                            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated 22/1/17 - text edits and stuff  
> 22/1/17 - whoops i forgot half of the entire chapter just before, don't worry it should be fixed now  
> 31/8/17 - small edits, i haven't forgotten about this story


	2. Anteiku

“You should leave, before things get complicated.” Raye Penber quietly told Light as he exited from the bus, still holding Yuri’s hand. She looked down and shielded her eyes from the bloody corpse of the bus-jacker, whom had died only moments ago, and Light led her gently off the road to the sidewalk.

Light watched as Raye Penber moved around the scene. The plan had gone perfectly, he thought to himself. Penber’s identity, his name, was now Light’s, along with his allegiance to the FBI that he’d been so happy to share.

“Light?” asked Yuri, clutching Light’s hand tighter, her back to the scene unfolding behind them, “What should we do now?”

“Do you want to go home? You’d probably feel better off at home with your family.” Replied Light, his back turned to the bus and the body of the bus-jacker. He could smell the corpse only a few metres behind him.

Light took a deep breath, and fixed his gaze back on Yuri. While it wasn’t normally a problem, trying to stop his eyes from turning a ghoulish black and red was definitely harder when a human body oozing blood was lying not even five metres away from him–

“I know this might sound strange, considering what’s just happened, but I think we should finish this date,” said Yuri eventually, fiddling with her hair.

Light allowed a somewhat surprised expression to appear on his face. “Are you sure? If you still wanted to go to SpaceLand, I’d be more than ha–”

“I think I’d rather stay away from SpaceLand,” replied Yuri, growing slightly more confident. “What about seeing a movie or something like that?”

Light was sure that she’d have wanted to go home following the death of the bus-jacker. He hadn’t planned at all in advance that she might not want to go home. He’d cornered himself into having no other options than taking her on an actual date.

Light sighed. She wanted to see a movie? Fine, then he would see a movie.

“Sure,” he flashed her his best, most understanding smile, “Do you know where the nearest theatre is?”

Yuri paused for a second. “I don’t come to this district very often, but from memory, there’s a shopping centre not too far from here. I’ll get some directions from the internet.”

She went to grab her phone out of her pocket, but Light interrupted her with “We could just wander around the streets until we find the shopping centre. It can’t be too far from here, can it?”

Briefly, Light considered attempting to lose her in a crowd and head home, but decided that Yuri would find it odd at the very least, and possibly even asking for a replacement date at most. As much as Light would have preferred to not wander around the streets with a girl he didn’t care for, he couldn’t back out now.

Yuri considered what he had said, and then looked back to Light happily. “Sure, I can do that.” she smiled.

“Hey, Light,” called a voice, and Light tilted his head slightly so he could see the large, hulking shape of Ryuk behind him. The Shinigami had been unusually quiet since the bus jacker had spotted him, but Light wasn’t complaining. “Mr FBI is following us again.”

Light frowned as Yuri began down the street. He’d thought that the “accident” would prevent Penber from following him for at least the rest of the day, but it appeared he was mistaken. Sure enough, he could see the form of the FBI agent standing a few metres away, his attention on Light. Light internally groaned, and set off anyways.

For half an hour, Yuri and Light wandered the streets of the unfamiliar district, stopping at a dozen different shops along the way. Yuri tried on almost all the clothes she saw, resulting in Light spending most of the morning waiting outside a change room to spout empty compliments when she emerged in different clothing.

It was around lunch time when Yuri suggested finding somewhere to eat, and the two wandered around before finding a small café that Yuri recognised, saying that it had the best coffee she’d ever had. Scanning the menu board outside, Light considered how necessary it would be for him to eat something here. As horrible as eating human food was, over the weeks Light had improved his skills in making it look like he wasn’t eating horse crap, enough that he even looked to be enjoying the food sometimes.

The café Yuri seemed to know was named “Anteiku,” and it was fairly small and rather far off the main streets. In a word, looking from the outside in, Light would have called it “unimpressive.”

The door chimed as Yuri and Light walked in, and immediately, something felt off. Something very off, that made Light’s eyes widen as he recognised what was wrong in the small café.

Everyone in the store was a ghoul.

The smiling old man at the counter, cleaning coffee mugs in the little sink. Ghoul.

The happy young waitress collecting orders from the middle-aged couple sitting near the back. Ghouls.

The glasses-wearing woman engrossed in a book over in the corner. Ghoul.

The tiny little girl sitting with her parents, chatting animatedly. All ghouls.

They were all casually sitting around, drinking, talking. To any ordinary person, the café seemed perfectly normal, filled with normal people doing normal things.

Yet Light could look past the fake curtains of normality, and see the truth. The café was filled with murderers.

Light hated how these ghouls were all casually sitting around, like they weren’t all killers.

He hated how ghouls preyed on the innocent, leaving children without mothers and fathers, parents without sons and daughters.

He hated that they we so much harder to track and kill with the Death Note compared to a human murderer. A human typically had one name, that under normal circumstances they used throughout their entire life. Ghouls, on the other hand, changed their names whenever they felt like it, and any ghouls that eventually showed up on the internet or the police database were given nicknames or codenames by the Commission of Counter Ghoul, meaning that Light was powerless to kill them with his only weapon.

And Light had just walked into a café filled with ghouls, without his sole weapon. Sure, he had a small piece concealed in his watch, but it was impossible to think he could gain correct names and make the sudden deaths of an entire café of people look like an accident. As much as he would enjoy passing judgement on the entire population of the café, there was no way it would happen.

Should he run? It would appear quite odd to Yuri, and she’d specifically pointed out this particular café, but he could possibly pull it off with some excuse. Penber would mostly likely find it suspicious if he suddenly left the building as soon as he walked in, surely.

Yuri pulled Light gently forward, snapping him from his thoughts and effectively preventing him from turning and running.

“Welcome to Anteiku!” called a voice from the counter, and Light looked over to see the young waitress smiling at him. Light deliberately avoided her gaze to seem less like a threat, but Yuri smiled and waved back.

Light moved to the only open table, which was thankfully close to the door if he needed to make an escape.

“Would you like a menu?” Light almost jumped as the waitress appeared behind them, placing menus on their table, only barely managing to keep his poker face. The café put him on edge, and Light hated every second he spent in the cafe. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you around here before,” she smiled again in a warm and friendly way, making Light dislike her and her fake happy grin even more, “Are you new?”

“Oh, we’re only in this part of the city for the day,” replied Yuri cheerily, picking up her menu and reading through it.

The girl left the table with a small bow, and Light watched her move back to the counter. She seemed to say something to the old man washing mugs, although the man didn’t make any indication that she had. She was definitely saying something, but what? He briefly tried straining his enhanced hearing, but to no avail.

“What do you want to order, Light?” asked Yuri, passing him the menu, and briefly snapping him out of his thoughts. “The club sandwich sounds pretty good.”

“I’m not sure if I’ll eat,” replied Light, looking through the menu quickly. “I’ll probably just have something to drink.”

“It’s really not healthy to not have lunch,” replied Yuri, “If it’s anything, I can pay for it. It’ll be your reward for following me around all day.”

Light gave his most sincere-looking smile. “You don’t have to do that.” he said, but he knew that Yuri’s stubbornness would force him to have a meal, whether he liked it or not. And he really didn’t like it.

“Excuse me, we’re ready to order!” called Yuri as Light looked through the menu again for something small. Luckily, the café mostly sold sandwiches, with their main attraction obviously being coffee. Briefly, Light wondered why ghouls would even bother running a café. A front to attract humans?

Light ordered a small ham-and-cheese sandwich and water, whereas Yuri ordered an extravagant-sounding meal with a milkshake. The waitress took down the order, giving Light a sideways glance as she did so, as if she expected him to say something. But she didn’t say anything, and Light avoided looking back at her.

She finished writing the order quickly and thanked them again for choosing Anteiku, before walking back to the counter. It didn’t take long for her to return to the table with their orders. Yuri dug in immediately, and encouraged Light to do the same.

He steeled himself, and took a big bite of the sandwich sitting in front of him, chewing it a few times and swallowing it quickly. It was disgusting in every sense of the word, but Light smiled for Yuri’s sake, before taking a large drink of water to get the taste out of his mouth. He knew it would be harder for him to throw it up later if he tried washing it down with water, but he’d wanted to get rid of that horrid taste as soon as he could.

Light managed to make his way through half of the sandwich, but refused the second half and instead got up to go to the bathrooms. After asking the waitress, she led him through a door marked “staff only”, down a hallway and to the toilets with a sympathetic smile. God, Light despised that smile of hers.

As soon as Light entered the bathrooms, he locked the door and leant over the toilet, forcing himself to vomit up the sandwich. It was just as disgusting coming back up as it was going down, if not worse, but Light knew that he’d become sick if he left it.

Eventually, when he was sure he’d emptied his stomach of the food, he washed up and unlocked the door. Waiting right outside was the waitress, fiddling with her uniform.

“Were you waiting for me?” asked Light quickly as she looked up. She blocked off the hallway, leaving only the bathroom behind Light available if he wanted to retreat.  

“This is a staff area. I can’t leave customers alone back here.” She replied emotionlessly, apparently having lost her cheery customer-service tone.

“I understand.” Replied Light, and he went to move past her and back into the relative safety of the café, but she grabbed his arm.

“Your girlfriend said you were visiting the 20th. You gonna kill her here?” the girl stared him straight in the eyes, fixing him with an unblinking glare.

Light paused for a second. What answer did she want? Her voice and body language showed that she was could hurt him if he answered incorrectly, but Light didn’t have any experience with other ghouls that would indicate what to respond with.

She thought that he was going to eat Yuri, but he couldn’t possibly.

Raye Penber was still following the two, sitting right outside this very café at this very moment, and if anything remotely ghoulish happened, Light would be immediately reported to the CCG. Knowing he was already suspected of being Kira, Light did not want to look like anything less than the perfect teenage son. A suspected ghoul would have even more people following him, and his entire family. The accusations of being a ghoul could ruin his father’s career, even after he was proven human by the CCG. So killing Yuri was out of the question, but what if that was the answer the waitress wanted?

What if he responded that yes, he would kill her? Would the waitress or one of the other ghouls in the café follow him and make sure he did so? If he said that no, he would not kill her, would that make him appear weak, someone that they could easily pick off? Light inwardly cursed his lack of knowledge regarding ghoul habits.

“You’re from out of town, so you might not know the rules around here.” Said the waitress suddenly, startling Light out of his musings. “So I’ll tell you. Here in the 20th ward, Anteiku is in charge. You go and slaughter someone on our turf, that brings suspicion onto us. This ward is supposed to be peaceful, but that can all be ruined by one idiot who doesn’t know the rules.”

Despite being much smaller than Light, the girl was highly intimidating, and Light definitely did not want to get on her bad side.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He said quickly, putting up his hands like he was surrendering to her. “I’m not going to eat her, especially not here.”

Light hoped that the answer he gave was the correct one, and that she would let him go, but she continued to grab his arm.

“You have been warned.” She said eventually, loosening her grip on Light enough for him to pull away from her. “If anything happens, and I mean _anything,_ your head is at the top of my list.”

Light nodded. “Understood, ma’am.” he gave her his best attempt at a reassuring smile as he brushed past her. He attempted to make his return into the café through the “Staff Only” door as casual as possible, and sat down at his chair next to Yuri.

Yuri was still making her way through the massive meal she had ordered, so Light settled down, taking another large drink of water. Of everything he had tried, water was the only thing that he could drink and not have to force back up later, so he’d begun to drink it much more than he had ever done before.

Eventually, as the two organised themselves to leave, two new customers in long white cloaks carrying identical metal briefcases entered the café. The mood inside the cafe suddenly turned extremely tense, as the ghoul patrons stopped talking, and avoided glancing at the two men who had just entered the store.

The new customers were definitely human, Light could smell that. But he could easily guess why the ghouls were tense.

The large briefcases that the men carried smelt very wrong. The scent was similar to a ghouls, and at the same time, not like a ghoul at all, in an odd mixture of flesh and metal that was definitely not natural. It took Light only a few seconds to realise who the men were.

Ghoul investigators.

It was obvious, really. While Light had never met an officer of the Commission of Counter-Ghoul personally, other than the few presentations that had been held at school, he easily recognised their uniforms and cloaks. CCG officers were rather common in the police station where his father worked, often working with the police, so Light often saw then when he visited his father. Small symbols were embroidered onto the men’s clothing, with the letters “CCG” in bold.

Yuri continued to pack things away in her handbag, blissfully unaware of the threat the two men posed, or how the café had gone dead. Light watched them intently out of the corner of his eye as the old man at the counter served them. They seemed fairly relaxed, so was it possible that they were unaware of the ghouls surrounding them? Or was that a trap to lure them into a false sense of security?

Either way, Light wanted to leave the premises as soon as possible. There was no way he wanted to take any chances with the CCG, whom had permission to flat-out kill ghouls on sight.

Would they suspect him if he was to leave as soon as they had arrived, he briefly worried.

Yuri stood up to leave, and Light followed her as she moved towards the counter to pay for their meal. The young waitress served them, glancing at the Investigators as she did. She was acting her part of a normal waitress quite well, but Light could tell she was on edge.

Light and Yuri left the establishment without anybody stopping them, barely a glance in their direction. As they stepped outside, Light spotted Raye Penber shuffle out of view. He was still following them, but he hadn’t gone inside the restaurant.

Also waiting outside was Ryuk, who had floated along rather quietly all day. “Hey, Light,” he said as Yuri and Light walked along the street. “You know who those guys were, right? Wouldn’t you be stuffed if one them found you? Imagine that, almighty Kira taken down by a little ghoul investigator.” Ryuk chucked to himself. His endless stream of comments had been toned down today, possibly because the reaper knew that Light wouldn’t answer him in the company of Yuri.

The Shinigami’s words echoed in Light’s head. What if he was spotted while eating, and killed by a CCG member? L was more than able to line up the death of a ghoul who just happened to be suspected for being Kira with when the Kira killings abruptly stopped. What would his family do if they were to suddenly find out that their son was a ghoul? Would the CCG kill them, as well?

The thoughts repeated themselves as Light and Yuri boarded the train home. His fears of his identity being discovered only intensified as Light and Yuri exited the train, the station located opposite to a local park.

It was the park that Light had been utilising rather recently. The park that was now surrounded by a crowd of curious people and marked off limits by yellow police tape. Police officers were hovering around the area, attempting to stop civilians from entering the park.

“What’s going on here?” asked Yuri, looking across the street to the large crowd.

“I don’t know,” replied Light, hoping with all his might that whatever had taken place there was unrelated to himself. He looked around at the police officers, quickly spotting his father among them. “I can see my father, we should ask him.”

Yuri nodded, and the two crossed the street and made their way through the crowd to Mr Yagami, whom was barking orders at the police officers in his jurisdiction.

“Father, what’s going on?” asked Light as soon as his father spotted the pair of them, but his father’s grim expression already seemed to confirm to Light one of his worst fears.

“I shouldn’t be telling you, but you’ll find out eventually,” said Soichiro Yagami, looking from his son to Yuri, “Two bodies were found in the river here. It’s suspected to be a ghoul attack, we’re clearing the scene before the CCG arrives …”

The elder Yagami continued, but Light didn’t pay him any attention. 

 _The bodies had been found_.

He had eaten most of the flesh off the two criminals he’d called to the park, leaving them virtually unrecognisable. He was always left with a mangled, bony corpse every time he ate, unable to eat the entire body and with no way to store any of the left overs. He dumped the corpses in the deepest part of the river that ran through the lake, attempting to bury them even further by shovelling dirt over it. The park was not close to any shops, and sat alone next to a few properties, and never really had large groups go through it, so Light had figured it was the best location closest to his house.

Now Light realised that he’d been too careless with the disposal of the bodies. Perhaps he should have dumped them elsewhere, away from the park. Perhaps he should have staged an attack somewhere else, so that he could continue to use the park after the body was found. His hunger must have caused him to not plan his food as thoroughly as he would plan anything else, and now he could never use this park again.

At the very least, he was thankful that the river had washed away anything that could have been traced back to him. He knew that the CCG collected ghoul saliva during their investigations, which would be damning evidence if he was ever forced to prove his humanity. 

And while the time he had left wasn’t ideal, he had eaten fairly recently, which left him a large enough window to find somewhere else to eat, and to get rid of Penber, so that he could walk around without being followed.

Raye Penber was his biggest threat here, and therefore, his death was at the top of Light’s to-do list. He knew how to use Penber to kill the other FBI members. He just needed to get home and prepare it all, far away from the scene of this crime.

Light refocused his attention on the situation before him. His father was still talking to the two of them, but he’d stopped listening long ago. Yuri was clutching his hand, looking up at him with a worried expression. Light’s own gaze was focused on the park.

Ryuk had been laughing constantly from the moment the train had pulled into the station, but he stopped as he looked down at Light.

“Hey, Light?” he called, looking down at the stony teenager. “You’ve got your scary smile on. You’ve got a plan, doncha?”

While normally Light didn’t respond to Ryuk in public, this time he gave the smallest of nods towards the Shinigami.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated 22/1/17 - i hope light is less of a massive dumbass idiot now


	3. Confrontation

Light watched closely as Penber collapsed outside the train carriage’s door, and he moved quickly to grab the envelope from the rack above where Penber had been sitting just moments before.

The FBI agent continued to writhe on the ground, and Light looked down at him as the man struggled to pull himself around, to face the train’s closing doors.

His eyes widened in shock as he recognised Light, with the envelope in hand, standing at the door. “Yagami … Light …”

“Farewell, Raye Penber.” Replied Light, his face devoid of emotions as the train’s doors closed with a electronic hum, and the train quickly pulled away from the station. Light watched Penber’s collapsed form grow smaller on the platform, until the train rounded a bend and he was no longer visible.

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Raye Penber was finally dead, along with all the other FBI agents in Japan. Light couldn’t help let out a sigh of relief as he stepped off the train at the stop nearby his home, the one opposite the park. As he left the station, he dropped the two-way radio he’d given Penber into the closest bin, after fiddling with a few of the components so that it wouldn’t work again.

“You’re happy with yourself,” said Ryuk as Light walked down the mostly abandoned streets silently.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” replied Light with a sideways smirk at the Shinigami, who rolled his eyes. “Penber is gone, forever. And once the police find that L was going behind their backs, there’s no way they’ll trust him again.“

Ryuk laughed, and rolled his eyes. “You’re rather creative, I’ll give you that.”

Light’s grin widened. The Japanese Kira Task Force was around 150 men strong, from what Light had seen through his father’s records. L conducted conferences with them through video link, using only audio delivered via an elderly man known as Watari, whom matched no records on the Japanese family registry. Light had checked.

After the stunt L had pulled with Lind L. Tailor, and with his continual refusal to show his face, there must already be members among the Task Force who were mistrustful of the mysterious, so-called ace detective. Once word spread that L had used FBI agents from America to investigate all of their families, his reputation amongst his supposed colleagues would be damaged beyond repair. It was almost too easy.

And since he’d practically announced with a loudspeaker that Kira would kill those who try to stop him, many of the officers would most likely resign from the job, leaving a smaller and less effective group to tackl–

“Oi! You!” a voice from further down the street called to Light.

Light froze, and looked ahead of him.

A large shape stood at the end of the street, appearing to be a very large and heavily muscled man wearing a jacket with its hood up. The closest street lamp cast a dull yellow light that only barely illuminated his face, outlining a few gruff features that Light didn’t recognise.

“I’m talking to you, kid!” called the man, walking closer to Light.

Trying his best to avoid a confrontation, Light avoided eye contact as the larger man marched up to him, puffing out his chest and glaring down at him. Being this close, Light quickly picked up that the man smelled like blood; so strongly that the coppery scent seemed to leak from his pores and cling to his clothes. A scent that Light immediately recognised and, truthfully, even shared with the man, the scent of a ghoul.

A ghoul had just approached him in an empty street, just after dark. Light’s mind, already racing ahead, reached several conclusions to this scenario.  The vast majority involved an altercation between himself and the larger ghoul. Sharp as Light’s reflexes were from his many years of tennis, he knew it would be almost impossible to stand as the victor in a solo match against a much larger and more powerful ghoul, who’d most likely been brawling to defend himself since he was born.

What route should Light take then? Try his best to appear as harmless as possible until the older ghoul’s guard was down and he could escape. That was his most favourable option.

Still avoiding the man’s eyes, Light changed his posture to seem less aggressive to the opposing ghoul, who was still looking down at him, breathing heavily. “Yes?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” spat the larger ghoul. “You’re the little shit that drew all those police to my park, aren’t you? There are twice as many doves in my Ward now!”

Light brushed at a fleck of spit that had landed on his cheek. Doves? What did he mean by _doves_? There were more _birds_ in the park now? He gave the slightest of nods to the older ghoul, still staring at the ground. If he seemed insignificant enough, kept his head down, he should be able to get away unharmed, wouldn’t he? If he agreed, would the ghoul leave him be?

The man growled, and in a single movement, grabbed Light by the collar and hoisted him into the air, surprising Light enough for him to let out a strangled gasp of shock. He flailed in the air for a few seconds, only for the larger ghoul to fling the teenager back onto the pavement as easily as throwing a rag doll. In the few seconds Light had before he was smashed painfully into the ground, he’d attempted to land on his feet and tried his best to formulate a plan to get him out of this situation, only for his thoughts to be suddenly interrupted by the audible crack of a bone and his head colliding with the concrete sidewalk. 

A horribly sharp wave of pain shot through Light as he lay on the ground, numb and stunned. He’d been thrown onto the ground with enough force to cause a concussion, even with his brief attempt to land feet first. The more he considered it, a concussion was likely, as a loud pain throbbed from the back of his head. A wave of nausea spread across him as he dared a look at his leg, which was most definitely not supposed to be twisted the way it was.

The ghoul kicked Light onto his back, and looked down on him with piercing black and crimson eyes.

“I don’t know where you came from, but this is what happens when you show up on my turf. This is what happens when more doves show up because of your stupid fucking mistakes.” The larger ghoul’s voice dripped with rage as he stared down on Light, who was still attempting to recover from the shock. Looking again at the younger ghoul, he aimed a powerful kick at Light’s stomach, strong enough that the teenager threw up blood

The taste of the crimson liquid in his mouth burned Light as he glanced back up at the older ghoul, who was grinning down at him. “Not even going to fight back? Useless.”

Attempting to concentrate over the overwhelming sense of pain, Light focused on his leg. It was fractured at the very least, and since he now possessed the healing powers of a ghoul, he hoped that concentrating on it would help speed up the healing process. If his leg worked, he could get away, hide, recuperate.

“I really shouldn’t be dragging this out any longer,” smirked the ghoul. Light felt the pain in his leg slowly begin to recede, and concentrated all of his willpower onto healing it.

There was a strange noise, sounding like a wet crack, and something very large, and very red appeared behind the ghoul.

Light’s eyes widened as he recognised it as a kagune, a ghoul’s predatory weapon, its hunting claws. The ghoul’s kagune smoothly solidified into a thick, blood-red whip, dancing in front of Light’s eyes. Due to his research, he knew it was of the bikaku variety, a type with no significant weaknesses, the so called “trump card” of kagune types.

The edge of the red whip sharpened into a blade as it moved closer to Light’s throat, the owner looking down with a gleeful smile, miming slitting his own throat with his fingers.

The ghoul raised his kagune above Light’s head, ready to strike, as Light felt a click in his leg – it was healed, or at least healed enough for him to move again. The older ghoul brought his kagune crashing downwards heavily, Light only just managing to move out of the way mere seconds before the bikaku sliced his entire neck clean off.

Light moved backwards as fast as he could, stumbling to his feet, ignoring the intense pain of his only partially-healed knee as he prematurely placed weight on it. The ghoul took a few moments to realise that he’d missed, and turned to Light, his eyes glowing with fury.

Light surveyed the scene in front of him – he was facing an older, more experienced ghoul with a bikaku kagune, a type known for its lack of weaknesses. He could escape if he made it  past the ghoul, who’d blocked off the street with his kagune tail that lashed out behind him. He was weakened and couldn’t run far before his partially-healed leg would stop him, placing him at an outrageous disadvantage. What options did he ha-

The ghoul let out a feral roar and with no hesitation charged forward, his bikaku shooting forward, aimed to strike at Light’s chest. Reflexively, Light brought his hands forward to protect his face, clenching his eyes shut. There was a clanging noise as bikaku hit and rebounded backwards.

Light’s black and crimson eyes snapped open. A large, red shield had protected him. No, he realised after a few seconds, not a shield.

A kagune.

 _His_ kagune.

Sprouting from just below his shoulder blades and currently resting on his arms, Light’s kagune was shaped similarly to a large, broad knife. It sat on the top of his arms like armour plating, and covered his limbs up to his finger tips with a thick and flat shield-like shell with edges sharper than any blade he’d ever come across.

Light stared at it for a few seconds. Of course he’d tried summoning a kagune before, but he’d never gotten any results, other than Ryuk’s laughter. He’d wondered if he even had a kakuhou, the organ unique to ghouls that released the kagune, as a mere two and a half months ago, he’d had the body of a human. Perhaps he’d needed a stronger conviction to summon his … koukaku-type kagune, he believed. He could ponder this later, when he was in a less life-threatening situation. Assuming he made it to a less life-threatening situation.

He quickly re-evaluated his position. He was now armed with the strong defensive-type koukaku, which had proven itself able to withstand the bikaku’s attacks. On the negative side, his opponent obviously had much more experience, which was something Light lacked completely. Light was still wounded, and his heavy kagune would only slow him down until he managed to disperse it. While his immediate future was somewhat brighter, Light still couldn’t see many positive outcomes.

“So you wanna fight now?!” yelled the bikaku ghoul, charging once again at Light.

Since the bikaku was released from below the tailbone, and Light’s opponent’s whip-like kagune wasn’t exceptionally large, he was most likely aiming for something in close range. The easiest targets were Light’s legs or chest. As the older ghoul moved closer, Light shifted the positioning of his arms and the kagune shields covering them to protect his legs and chest.

The bikaku tail once again bounced off the surface of Light’s koukaku with a clang, and Light smirked. The bikaku’s owner growled obscenities in Light’s direction, before charging once more. Reading his attacker’s posture as he stormed over, Light shifted his kagune to this time protect his face as well as his chest, and his smile widened as the tail again rebounded harmlessly from his shield.

The ghoul turned to charge at Light again, who let out a small laugh at the predictability of his opponents. This time, if he could move fast enough to slice at the ghoul with the sharp side of his kagune and begin an offensive, it was possible that he could even turn this fight around-

“What’s going on?” another voice called out. Light turned to the source of the noise, and so did his attacker.

Someone else had joined them, and was sitting casually on top of a nearby building, about two stories high. “What’s happening?” asked the unknown person again.

The bikaku ghoul obviously recognised him and snorted, yelling back to him, “So you’ve finally shown up? Took a goddamn fight on your doorstep for you to get your ass out of that human nest. I’ll kill you, along with this brat!”

“I don’t think I’d like that,” replied the other person, and Light detected nervousness creeping into the newcomer’s voice. “At all. Can you please just take this fight somewhere else? I quite like having no doves around here.”

“Come down here and stop us!” roared the bikaku, glaring directly up at the unknown person.

The mystery figure had mentioned doves again, and Light wondered again what they could they be referring to. It was obviously a code for something negative, as neither of the two ghouls here wanted them to be nearby. The bikaku had claimed the park had been swarming with both police and these doves, meaning that they weren’t police officers. The only other group Light had seen around the park were the white cloaked officers like those he’d seen at the Anteiku café in Nerima, the ghoul investigators…

Light could have sworn there was an audible “click” as the pieces fell into place in his head, and mentally cursed for not being able to realise this sooner.

Doves were the ghoul investigators.

Light had brought even more investigators into this ward by not covering his tracks wisely enough, which why the ghoul had attacked him in the first place. He’d threatened the survival of all ghouls around here by calling in even more hunting dogs to the fox den that was Light’s neighbourhood.

“You know that I can’t win against you,” replied the nervous voice to the older ghoul, continuing on despite Light’s musings. “What are you even fighting about this time?”

Light looked up at the shadowed figure with confusion. The voice obviously belonged to another ghoul, but a ghoul that was refusing to fight, and attempting persuasion? There were ghouls whose first instinct wasn’t to rush straight out, guns blazing?

“This little piece of shit here is the bastard who drew all the doves to the park!” the bikaku pointed at Light accusingly, who moved to cover his face with his koukaku subconsciously in an attempt to protect his identity. “I want to get rid of him, but he’s got one of them fucking shield kagune.”

“That’s not too good,” the nervous, unknown speaker’s voice carried down the building to where Light and his opponent were standing. “But you could, you know, have tried talking to him first? I mean, he’s obviously new here and doesn’t know any rules.” The voice paused, apparently thinking, “I don’t remember meeting a new ghoul recently, so he probably hasn’t even talked to anyone in the ward.”

The bikaku ghoul’s kagune twitched, before he sighed, his kagune evaporating into a red mist behind him. “Fine! I get it, fine, I’m leaving! Are you happy now?” the ghoul turned to Light, his eyes still the ghastly crimson red and midnight black. “I’ll let you go, only because that prick up there is annoying me. You had better get your ass down to the next ward meeting, though.  And if you don’t clean up after yourself again, and this place gets swamped with doves, I’m coming for you. Understood?”

Light looked up at the ghoul, surprised. Was he actually letting him go? He nodded, and the ghoul stormed into the darkness, loudly muttering something about minding your own business. Light watched as his bulky form eventually vanished, before letting out a small sigh of relief. As he did, he felt the weight of his kagune disappear, the bulky koukaku dispersing into red particles, his eyes turning from black and red to their normal brown.

“Oi, you down there. Are you all right?” called the voice, and Light watched the rooftop figure stand up and jump down the side of the building, landing awkwardly nearby and toppling over, but jumping back up despite it. Light’s eyes flashed ghoulish colours again as he prepared for another confrontation.

“Relax, I just asked if you’re okay,” the other ghoul began walking towards Light, his hands held up in a peaceful gesture.

Was Light okay?

Well, the massive headache he’d received after his head was smashed into the concrete sidewalk was only just starting to recede, his leg was still aching, his chest was still in pain from being kicked, and he felt overwhelmingly tired and wanted more than anything to just go home and sleep, but apart from that, he was just peachy.

“I’m fine,” he said, brushing some blood from his mouth, looking away.

“Are you sure? You look pretty beat u-“ the voice stopped, and Light spotted the figure tilt his head and study his appearance closer.

Did this ghoul know him? Did he know this ghoul? Was it safe for this ghoul to know his identity? He quickly studied the unknown ghoul in front of him.

“Yagami-kun? Is that you?” the figure asked as it finally moved into the light of the streetlamps, making his features more apparent. The ghoul was fairly young, in his mid twenties at most, and had an average, plain-looking appearance. Black hair framed an almost dopey-looking face, a face that Light immediately recognised.  

“Matsuda-san?”

A young police detective whom Light had often met at his father’s workplace, Matsuda Touta, stood before Light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated 22/1/17 - mostly just grammar edits for this chapter
> 
> Light's Kagune is mostly based on Kukui Urie's, if you wanted a more visual representation.


End file.
